Passage to a Ringed World - NASA's History Office
Passage to a Ringed World - NASA's History Office
Passage to a Ringed World - NASA's History Office
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66 PASSAGE TO A RINGED WORLD<br />
Then, what are the internal structures<br />
of the satellites? Did they fully differentiate?<br />
Close flybys of the satellites<br />
entailing precise measurements by<br />
the RSS of gravitational perturbations<br />
will be able <strong>to</strong> determine which satellites<br />
have cores. Accurate measurements<br />
of the density of each satellite,<br />
coupled with spectroscopically deter-<br />
mined compositional information,<br />
will yield determinations of their bulk<br />
densities.<br />
And finally, what was the origin of<br />
Phoebe? Is it a captured Kuiper Belt<br />
object or a more pedestrian asteroid?<br />
Is its surface material related <strong>to</strong> the<br />
dark material on either Iapetus or<br />
Hyperion?<br />
With four years <strong>to</strong> investigate Saturn<br />
and its icy satellites, the Cassini–<br />
Huygens mission hopes <strong>to</strong> shed some<br />
light on the innumerable mysteries<br />
that remain about this solar system<br />
giant. Any answers that Cassini uncovers,<br />
of course, are equally likely<br />
<strong>to</strong> lead <strong>to</strong> even more questions.